With the recent conservation of Eddie Owens Martin’s Pasaquan, the road ahead for the site is open to new possibilities. Panelists shared insights on how they curated Pasaquan as a lived-in space and how they plan to continue to make it an immersive environment that is innovative, interactive, and continually reinventing itself. Discussion moved beyond Pasaquan and begin to lay out a framework that deals with the practical, day-to-day, and sustainability issues that many art environments encounter.

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Session Moderator

Michael McFalls

Associate Professor, Director of Pasaquan, Columbus State University

Michael McFalls is a practicing artist, a professor of art, and the Director of Pasaquan. He received his BFA in fine arts from the Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, OH, and his MFA from the University of California at Davis. Before joining Columbus State University in Columbus, GA, he served as the art program coordinator and assistant professor of art at the University of Maine at Farmington. He recently completed a six-month Fulbright Fellowship in Sweden at the University of Gothenburg, HDK Steneby, and has received numerous scholarships and awards including the Pitzerker Foundation Endowed Fellowship, College of the Arts Faculty Research Award, as well as being nominated for the University Regents’ Excellence in Teaching Award. Mike has been a resident at Sculpture Space, Inc.; The Djerassi Resident Artists Program; and Australia National University; and a visiting artist at Dartmouth College and Furman University.

Session Panelist

Jonathan Frederick Walz

Director of Curatorial Affairs & Curator, The Columbus Museum

Jonathan Frederick Walz is director of curatorial affairs and curator of American art at The Columbus Museum. Walz’s expertise is in American Modernism and supporting diversity, inclusion, and multiculturalism in art and history. As an expert on American Modernism and queer visual studies, Walz worked closely with artist Gê Orthof on a site-specific response to St. EOM at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.

Session Panelist

Fred C. Fussell

Writer & Curator

Fred C. Fussell is a veteran writer/curator. His books include Blue Ridge Music Trails (UNC Press), A Chattahoochee Album (HCC), and various topical essays for The New Georgia Guide (UGA Press), and The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (UNC Press). Fussell has curated numerous museum exhibitions focusing on traditional art and culture in the American South.

Session Panelist

Dr. Ann Smart Martin

Professor , University of Wisconsin-Madison

Dr. Ann Smart Martin is the Stanley and Polly Stone (Chipstone) Professor in the art history department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she teaches material culture, decorative arts, vernacular art, and museum practice and also heads the interdisciplinary material culture program. She is thrilled with the nearly two-decades UW-Madison/Kohler Foundation, Inc. relationship.

Session Panelist

Saya Woolfalk

Artist

Saya Woolfalk (Japan) is a New York-based artist who uses science fiction and fantasy to reimagine the world in multiple dimensions. With the multiyear projects No Place, The Empathics, and ChimaTEK, Woolfalk has created the world of the Empathics, a fictional race of women who are able to alter their genetic makeup and fuse with plants. With each body of work, Woolfalk continues to build the narrative of these women’s lives, and questions the utopian possibilities of cultural hybridity.

Session Panelist

James Ogburn

Professor, Columbus State University

Dr. James J. Ogburn (b. 1974) is a U.S.-born composer, conductor, author, and teacher whose recent works have been featured at over two dozen festivals in Thailand, the People’s Republic of China, Indonesia, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Spain, Poland, Italy, and throughout the U.S. He has served as artistic director/conductor for several ensembles, as well as been resident conductor at a number of festivals in Asia and the U.S. While living in Thailand (2009–15), he was chair of composition and theory at Mahidol University College of Music, director of Enclave Ensemble, program manager of the Thailand International Composition Festival, director of the Young Thai Artist Award, and researcher for the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra. In addition to being awarded the 2017 Cluster Prize (Etymos Ensemble, Lucca, IT), he was recently selected as a finalist for the Pittsburgh Chamber Music Society/Orion Quartet Commission Competition, the ALIA Musica Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble Commission Competition, and Third Prize in the American Prize for Composition (Professional/Orchestral category) for his Concerto for Accordion and Orchestra. For the ninth season of the Thailand Philharmonic, he was appointed as the first “Composer-in-Residence,” for which he composed five works for the 2013–14 Season. Dr. Ogburn received composition and theory degrees from Central Washington University (BM, 2004), and the University of Pittsburgh (MA, 2006 and PhD, 2009). Currently, he is assistant professor of composition and theory at the Schwob School of Music of Columbus State University. For more information and to hear recordings of his music, please visit: www.jamesogburn.com.

Session Downloads

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Essays

Related Exhibitions

Exhibitions

PASAQUOYANISM: EDDIE OWENS MARTIN

Jonathan Frederick Walz Gê Orthof

The juxtaposition of Eddie Owens Martin’s (St. EOM) colorful art environment, Pasaquan, in rural Georgia with the work of Brazilian artist Gê Orthof opened new avenues of inquiry into ideas of spirituality and utopias. PASAQUOYANISM offered the first showing of the Arts Center’s recently acquired works of art by St. EOM.